


lead on, wayward soldier

by Snowsheba



Series: thanks, dad. love, hana [6]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, can be read as a stand-alone, in which hana is a soldier and jesse is one of the few who understands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 04:42:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9368450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowsheba/pseuds/Snowsheba
Summary: anonymousasked: could we get some hana and jesse shenanigans or just the two of them hanging out?? i love ur writing so much and i love how you portray all the characters <3(takes place sometime before chapter 64 of thanks, dad. love, hana)





	

**Author's Note:**

> alternate summary: she'll lead you far if you'd just shut up and listen

“You know, the fact that Overwatch does not have a clear chain of command is dangerous.”

Jesse glances up from his datapad. Hana has a bowl of noodles before her, courtesy Hanzo, but she has yet to pick up her chopsticks and her voice is - distant, almost. 

He sets the datapad down on the table. “You think?”

“We have no commander,” Hana explains, frowning slightly at the steam rising from her bowl. “Winston is our leader, of course, but he has no combat command experience. We might answer to him, but what do we do when we are in a fight?”

“I guess we’d listen to Jack,” Jesse offers, curious to see where she might be going with this train of thought.

“Perhaps,” she says. “But we could also listen to Pharah, no? I imagine Ana and Zarya would have ideas, as well. But there is no second-in-command, no captains, no titles.” She’s quiet for a few moments before she speaks again. “If something happens to one of them, to whom would we turn?”

Jesse looks at her for a bit - really looks at her, this time, letting his Blackwatch training take over as he studies her face. She’s exhausted, but she’s covering it up with makeup; her expression looks strained, and her body language is withdrawn, and her hand is shaking almost imperceptibly as she picks up her chopsticks at last. For a moment, he sees a young teenager seated across from him, brown hair and lowered eyes and silent voice, eating quickly and quietly so to escape to the safety of obscurity. For a moment, he sees a gentle soul forced into a fight too early, accepting the burden of duty because _it is right and I must._

For a moment, he sees himself, just the barest flicker of loneliness and fear and uncertainty as he braved the winding path ahead of him, and suddenly he understands, more than anything, why this is so important to her.

“If we lose someone and someone else needs to lead,” he says, “you’ll know who it is, I guarantee it.“

She stills in place and flashes a look at him - _no_ , she hadn’t been that transparent, he had merely been too observant. _Too clever for your own good_ , Ana had told him once with a laugh, placing a hand on his shoulder, and he purses his lips and wonders if he should do the same as Hana quietly studies him in turn, eyes unwavering on the contours of his face.

“You were seventeen when you first joined,” she says, and of course she had read his file, she had probably read _all_ the files available to her. It’s what he would’ve done - it’s what he had done. “The crackshot from Deadlock. I had to look up both of those words.”

“And you are the starlet of MEKA,” Jesse drawls, noting the furrowing of her brows. “Young, beautiful, smart - and a veteran.”

 _You’ve seen things you shouldn’t have seen,_ he thinks, privately, despairingly. _You’ve endured hardships others your age can only understand in the most abstract of ways. You thrive on order and take down chaos._

“I am a soldier,” Hana says, and that is where they differ, a stark line in the sand.

“And I’m not,” Jesse says. “But Overwatch needs both of us, just as it needs those above us. Chaos is deadly, and order keeps us in line.”

“Without a chain of command - “ _without order_ , she means, they both know it - “the chaos spreads. It is unpredictable, and therefore dangerous. When there is no one left to control it, what will happen to Overwatch?“

He lets that simmer for a bit before he cracks a (brittle, broken) grin and says, “You know the answer to that.”

“Geneva, Switzerland,” she says, on cue. She’s sharp, like him; it’s little wonder they didn’t quite get along at first, two wolves circling each other. “Exactly. So why haven’t we established anything yet?”

“You’re askin’ me?” he drawls, leaning an elbow on the table and resting his head on his hand.

“Yes,” she says, and she might have sounded exasperated had she just not taken a bite of her noodles.

“‘Cause it’s too soon,” he says, and Hana gives him a impatient look. “No, I’m serious. Too soon.”

“Winston has gathered many of us already,” Hana points out. “If there has ever been a time to establish order, now is it.”

“Is it, though?” Jesse raises an eyebrow. “We aren’t yet a cohesive unit and we’ve got a lot of people who could lead - that you said yourself. But some of us lead in combat, some out of it, and some of us don’t lead at all and do our own thing.” Hana opens her mouth, but she closes it when he raises an index, _I’m not finished._ “You’ve seen us at work, Hana, and you know that not all of us are accustomed to takin’ orders from someone else.”

“That hardly changes the fact that they will take orders anyway,” Hana replies. “If Overwatch is a military organization, then we need to _be_ like one. At the moment, it reads as a mercenary force on paper, and everyone wonders why the U.N. is so hesitant.”

She has a point. It’s not something that Jesse hadn’t realized himself, as had Winston, and yet - “Who do you think should lead us, Hana?“

“It hardly matters what I think,” Hana says. She shrugs, and Jesse can see the muscles in the motion, the strength behind her words and actions. “Seventy-six is obviously the one who should take charge, but he will not. Winston has experience with public relations, numbers - the business side of things, in essence. What we need is someone to act as the face of Overwatch, and, so far, the only possible candidates either do not care or will not do it.”

“And it’s important that we have the one leader, is it?”

“A figurehead, then, if you are so particular,” Hana amends, eyes narrowing. “Someone who has the combat experience to back up Winston’s skills, a person who is good at PR and can hold their own on the battlefield. The U.N. would be convinced that Overwatch can be controlled through this person, and that would ease relations all across the board.” She shakes her head. “It is dangerous to be leaderless. When no one knows who to turn to, _that_ is when chaos is at its deadliest.”

She speaks from experience. Jesse can tell. It makes his chest constrict, a little bit; he realizes that they may have been similar once, but he did not possess even an ounce of the steel she carries when he had been her age.

“Why not you, then?” he says, because he’s not sure, because - because she’s right. She is. He knows it, and he has nothing to offer but hypotheticals. Neither of them are in charge, and they both know it; it’s the most they can do, at least at the moment.

“Me?” Hana says presently, and her laugh is short and ugly. “I suppose I could, but who would listen to me? No one would take me seriously, and why would they?”

“The MEKA force is widely respected across the world,” Jesse says. “Why wouldn’t they?”

“You know the answer to that. Do not degrade me by making me list why.”

 _Her age. Her looks. Her gender. Her chosen profession._ He knows, and he shouldn’t have asked. “Fair enough.”

Her noodles are finished now, and for a long moment they merely stare at each other. Strange, he thinks distantly; strange that they understand each other so well despite being on opposite sides of everything. He’s chaos and he’s almost two decades her senior and he knows military but not _military_ , and she’s order and young and sleepless and is a soldier to the bone. 

And here they are.

“We need to talk to Winston,” Hana says.

“Darlin’,” Jesse drawls, getting to his feet, “I couldn’t agree more.”


End file.
